


Spider Man

by donato



Category: Emergency!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 09:01:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12165744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donato/pseuds/donato
Summary: A routine call out causes one paramedic to start ranting, the other wishing he was anywhere else and then lady luck intervenes ... or should that be takes a wrong turn, leaving one unlucky paramedic as a guest at hotel Rampart.





	Spider Man

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Tim. A friend ?!! hell bent on freaking me out with snake and spider posts on facebook.

Spider Man

“Man down, 1983 Northwood West. That's one..nine..eight..three Northwood West. Time out 0940 hours.” The announcement from Sam Lanier saw Johnny make his way to the bay from the dorm where he was busy stripping down the beds for their shift. Roy had already written the info down and was replacing the mic having comfirmed the call. He was just about to head into the cab when he saw Johnny approach.

“Looks like they are playing our song, Junior.” Roy handed over the call out slip to his partner and put his helmet on just before turning the key to start up the squad.

“Yeah, wonder what it is this time? All these man down and unknown rescues basically all amass to the same thing. A mystery call! Doesn't really give you time to mentally prepare for what it is. Now if it was a gas explosion we would know some of what to expect but these man down calls it could be anything from a cardiac arrest to … to a cut finger. Heck even a stuck appendage in something! We really need more info, don't you think so Roy?”

Inwardly Roy sighed. It looked like Johnny had found his topic for the day. He was quickly trying to find the best way to curtail his partners latest rant with what he hoped would satisfy him. Realising that his partner expected an answer and with time running out Roy gave the only answer he could come up with,“Yeah.” Cringing inside as he knew he had just opened the floodgates for Johnny to ramble on incessantly for the rest of the day. A dull glaze fleetingly crossed Roys eyes as he realised what this day held in store for him. 

Johnny seeing he had a kindred spirit on this topic took it as consent to continue on in his indomitable style and was still espousing the pros and cons over his solutions to his latest bugbear as Roy pulled up to the house with the man down inside. Roy was still marvelling at how Johnny could issue out the directions without breaking his tirade and losing his place in his never ending soliloquy. Roy saw a lace curtain twitch from the front room and figured that their eagerly awaited presence was now known to the occupants.

The front door opened just as Roy's hand was about to knock on it. A very anxious woman in her mid thirties stood on the other side of the door. Not giving the paramedics a chance to introduce themselves she grabbed Roy's upraised arm and pulled him into the house talking all the while about her husband and Saffy having an altercation and how this wasn't good. 

If Roy thought Johnny could talk ten to the dozen then this woman put him to shame. He was barely keeping up with what she was saying let alone her fast pace through the house and out to the garden shed out back. Johnny was following behind and was awkwardly trying to catch up while not dropping any of their medical boxes or biophone. 

“He's in here. I'll stay out here as there won't be enough room in there for the four of us. In fact I'll be in the house if you need me." Johnny noticed the woman looking wildly around her in what he thought of as frantic eyes. She made a hurried escape to the back door and scurried in. Roy and Johnny took a moment to acclimatize to the darkened environment and introduce themselves to the man down.

“I'm real pleased to see ya. My name's Tim Coleridge and I had a bit of an encounter with Saffy. She took off in a huff. My fault, I know, I shouldn't have crowded her like I did, but ya know these things happen.”

“Ah, yeah. So what's the problem exactly?” Roy asked as he knelt down to the supine man on the dirty floor. A quick look hadn't revealed any injuries as such and Roy's mind was already thinking more along the line of muscle or bone injury since the man was conscious and making sense he ruled out a head injury. Nothing appeared to be too disturbed so the argument couldn't have been that violent. Thinking that Saffy was the wife, as she talked that fast Roy couldn't remember who Saffy was and the fact that the wife didn't hang around he figured the patient was still in the doghouse, so to speak, with her. 

“She got me right there.” Tim held up his left arm and pulled back his sleeve to show Roy his injury. 

Both paramedics leaned over to see what was the problem. It was hard to see anything. The man, seeing their difficulty, pointed to a small mark on his forearm. 

“What is that?” Johnny asked as he still couldn't make out what it was. It was too small to be a cut or a human bite. 

“It's what I've been telling ya. It's where Saffy got me. Oh gees! I'm never gonna hear the end of it from Paula, she hates spiders. They do her head in. That's why Saffy had to be out here. I mean, really, is this a nice view for a spider I ask you?”

“Spi... did you say spider?!!!” Johnny was edging out of the mans vicinity and closer to the door and to freedom. Now he could understand the wife looking around her all the time and her need to be in the house. Hell he was gonna join her and Roy could stay with the patient! After all Roy had built up the rapport with the man and it was Roy's turn to drive in with the patient if required, so all the more reason for him to be safe and sound in the house and relay the info by HT and then biophone. There, problem solved. Easy peasy. Now all he had to do was get his partner to agree.

A hand came down and grabbed Johnny by the shoulder. Johnny followed the arm to see his partner holding him steady. 

“Easy there Junior. Sir, can you tell me what type of spider are we talking about here and is it venomous?”

“Oh yeah, she's poisonous alright. More so than her cousins. She's a Gooty Sapphire Tree spider or tarantula. Take your pick. She's a real beauty too. Such a deep cobalt blue. But, boy, frazzle her and she'll bite you as quick as look at you. She's an aggressive little blighter. Not that she's that little. Fits on your hand ya know. But she has such a delicate touch when she's walking on you.”

Roy could hear Johnny dry swallow beside him and unconsciously try to pull away again. Yeah he would be backing out too with him if they didn't have to be so professional. Still they had a job to do. He gave a reassuring squeeze to Johnny's shoulder before asking for the stethoscope and bp cuff.

Refocusing on the patient and the possibility that the man had been envenomated Roy set about getting vitals while Johnny set up the biophone and contacted Rampart. 

With a line in and a bag of D5W TKO commenced, the wound was then bandaged and kept below the heart as instructed. The patient was loaded onto the stretcher and Roy was about to help manouevre the patient out of the garden shed when a loud yelp was heard and with a sinking heart Roy looked at his partner who was holding his hand with a frozen look of shock and fear on his face. 

“I've been bit.” Scared brown eyes met worried blue eyes as Johnny sat without aplomb on the dirty floor. He had been reaching over the biophone to close the lid which was in a darkened corner of the shed when he felt a sharp stinging pain on the back of his hand. 

“Let's get a tourniquet on that for the time being and then get out of here into a safer place.” The quietly spoken words from his level headed partner roused Johnny into action.

***---***

Unbelievable. Johnny just couldn't believe how his day was going. What was it with him and venomous creepy crawlies. First a snake and now a spider. A tarantula of all things!! He didn't know how but he knew that Chet would have a field day. Oh, wait, no a whole load of spider man jokes were coming his way he was sure. He let out a long and suffering low groan which had Roy pouncing on him instantly. 

“Are you OK, Johnny?” Roy asked as the ambulance raced towards the hospital. 

“NO!!! I'm NOT OK. Chet is gonna go to town on this. Spider man jokes and plastic spiders are gonna be a constant part of my foreseeable future. That's if I live through this. Oh, man. Why me???”

Roy gave a reassuring smile and told Johnny that Chet would soon desist especially with latrine duty as his punishment. Johnny gave a half skeptical look to Roy conveying his inner thoughts of 'yeah, right!'

Roy noted the fine beads of sweat on his partners' pale face and neck. His shirt was already clinging to his chest and looking damp in the Californian sunlight. Then there was the elevated pulse rate and low blood pressure when he was obtaining Johnny's vital signs. The other patient was relatively stable, in fact he was down right normal in every respect but Johnny was showing signs already. How could that be? Occasionally Roy would notice Johnny flicking his hand as if trying to remove an irritant. 

“It still stinging, Johnny?”

“Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if its stinging, or burning or both, ya know what I mean?”

“Yeah ...yeah I do. You just relax and hold on for me. We'll have you both at Rampart really soon.”

Johnny looked over at their original patient. “How're ya feeling?” 

“I'm OK. I don't feel bad at all. I don't understand why its different for you as it is for me. You OK?” Tim enquired as he felt guilty knowing it was all his fault for upsetting Saffy and playing with her outside of her terrarium in the first place. 

“I'm gonna be fine. Don't you worry about a thing. The guys at Rampart are the best. Just you wait and see.” Johnny threw a reassuring smile at the man and then turned his head to look out the window. From his angle he could see the sky and clouds and if he lowered his gaze a little the taller shops and their signs advertising their wares rushed by as they went through town, having left the suburbs a while back. 

Johnny felt pressure squeezing his upper arm and knew that Roy was obtaining his latest vital signs. It must have been ten minutes since the last lot were taken. So by his reckoning they were still a good five to ten minutes out from Rampart. It all depended on traffic flow and given it was still mid morning they should be making good time. Roy adjusted the flow on the IV into Johnny's arm. 

“BP still a bit low?”

“ Just a bit so I've upped the rate a little.” Roy then contacted Rampart to inform them of the patients vitals and their latest ETA.

“The pain is getting real bad, Roy. I don't think I can hold it together much longer. Any chance of some more MS?” Johnny asked a few minutes later.

“Your BP is too low for that Johnny. Hang in there, OK. We aren't far off from Rampart. Soon you will be feeling better.” Roy fervently hoped so as his partner was looking anything but better at the moment. He was drenched in sweat and pale to boot. There was swelling on his affected arm and it was spreading up as time went by. The pain had been intense until the morphine kicked in and it should still be working but maybe the pain was just getting worse regardless of the morphine Roy thought. One good thing was that the staff at Rampart had ample time to get the antivenom for this particular spider and Johnny wasn't allergic to the antivenom so there were some things to be thankful for. 

“At least you didn't have to put your own line in this time” Roy said out loud without realizing it.

“What? Line in. Oh yeah. You still feeling guilty abou' that. Well this should make up for that then.” Johnny rested his head back on the pillow and gave his friend a small smile meant to help relieve his friends guilt and anxiety but a cramp devoured his body and he let out a loud tortured yell as his body twisted in on itself.

Roy considered contacting Rampart and alerting them to this new symptom but giving a quick glance out the window he saw the towering structure of Rampart up ahead. He felt the ambulance turn and slow down. 

“Hang on Johnny, we're at Rampart now. You're gonna be fine.”

As the ambulance reversed up to the delivery bay, Johnny passed out with the pain.

***---***

“Treatment room 2. Dixie's got it all set up for Johnny.” Dr Early said as he helped to unload Johnny from the back of the ambulance. 

Dr Morton took the original patient into room 3 and Roy followed him, helping with directing the stretcher into the room. He gave Dr Morton his handover and then left to go into 2.

Johnny was groaning and moving his head. His eyelids were fluttering and he slowly opened them to see Dr Early standing over him and inspecting his bad arm. Dixie was finishing placing a gown on him. 

“Doc, pain... really... bad, please, I need sum...thing for the pain.” Johnny gasped out between clenched teeth. Dr Early noted the little muscular twitches occurring in Johnny's facial cheeks from the force he was exerting in fighting the pain and cramps. 

“Pulse 132, bp 90/55, resps 24, temp 99.1.” Carol was shaking the thermometer down as she spoke. 

“Lets open that bag to full flow and have a second line in and a liter of saline stat. Johnny, what symptoms are you having?” Jo Early asked in his quiet and calm manner.

“Pain, severe ... pain in arm and through ...out my ... body, feel …. clammy, sweaty..... ya know. Have a head … headache. My arm's ...burning … an stingin'... something bad. Heart ...jumping out … of ma chest.”

“Ah, he had a cramp that looked like it involved his whole body just before we pulled up here.” Roy volunteered.

“Doc, antivenom .... Arrgh!” Another cramp consumed Johnny as he folded in on himself, turning into a human pretzel. His continuing grunts came and went as his body relaxed and then went into spasm again.

Hands came down on Johnny to keep him on the table. The force of the cramp could be felt by his helpers as they felt his body twist and turn underneath them. 

“Give him 5mg morphine iv and 2mg diazepam iv stat Dixie.” Dr Early ordered. Dixie had no sooner given them before Roy asked Dr Early about the antivenom. He was wondering why it hadn't been ordered. After all they all knew he wasn't allergic to it. 

Dr Early looked down at a now dosing Johnny and informed Roy that there was no antivenom.

“Johnny's not gonna be happy to hear that.” Roy was still holding onto his friend as he felt the cramp release. He looked down and noted the beads of sweat adorning his partners face. Some of them had clumped together forming small pearls on his skin.

“Its a rare spider and not indigenous to America and from what the Entomologist at the University said when I contacted him for advice, the venom although potent isn't lethal. He's gonna be a ball of misery for a week at least. He's already displaying all the signs and symptoms. All we can do is treat the symptoms and intense pain and give a broad spectrum antibiotic to prevent an infection setting in. Spider fangs aren't exactly clean.”

Roy had been watching Johnny dozing peacefully on the table due to the drugs when he realized he had things to do elsewhere as there was no more for him to do here. Feeling reassured that Johnny was not in any danger of dying, he excused himself so that he could let Captain Stanley know of the latest events. He needed to get the squad to the hospital somehow and Cap to organize another partner for the rest of the shift. 

He met Dr Morton out by the nurses desk. He was writing in a patients chart. 

“How's Mr Coleridge?”

“He's fine. Given his absence of any symptoms, I'm diagnosing a dry bite so he's able to go home. I'm just writing him up a prescription for some oral antibiotics. I don't think the fangs went in that deep either as he had quite a thick shirt on so I'm guessing its all quite superficial ” Mike Morton told a confused looking Roy.

“A dry bite? Doc, whaddya mean?”

“Even though he was bitten the spider didn't release any venom so all he really got was a bite and nothing more. No worse than a mosquito bite. Actually it's even better as it's not itchy like a mossie bite is. How's Johnny doing?”

“He's got the full compliment of the effects. He's in a lot of pain and having bad cramps amongst other things. He will be like that for a week according to Dr Early. He's in for a bad ride from what I understand.”

“I'm sorry to hear that Roy. I'll pop in on him later if I have the time. He sure hasn't got luck on his side has he?” Morton walked away shaking his head as he went into discharge Mr Coleridge.

Roy made his way to the payphones to let his Captain know.

***---***

It was a long week for Johnny. He had sweated buckets out and his electrolytes were deranged. His low salts added to the misery he had with cramps. He couldn't move at one stage without his body betraying him with his muscles going into lock down. Everything hurt. His arm was swollen to twice it's normal size. He was on antibiotics to fight off an infection that had set in and the side effect of that had him going to the toilet with diarrhea, that was when he could move his muscles otherwise it was a bedpan and that was mortifying but necessary.

He had a headache that didn't know the meaning of leaving him alone. It was his constant companion. One saving grace was that the stinging had gone and was just replaced with a persistent burning pain which, he was thankful to note, was lessening as the days wore on. 

He was getting regular analgesia which helped to dim but not totally diminish the pain. At one stage earlier in the week, he had asked Dr Early to put him into a drug induced coma until the pain had passed. To say that it was intense felt like an understatement at times. He had been in abject misery and between the fever from the infection and all the side effects, Johnny had gone past the point of caring. 

When at last his symptoms started to lessen he took stock of how his body was doing. He found that all he had left after the week was a swollen arm which was getting smaller, the last few tendrils of a headache, sore muscles from the cramps and a loss of a few much needed pounds. He surmised that all up he was on his way to being discharged in a few days all going well and that he would be back in his own bed and apartment soon. That thought gave him a reason to smile. The first time in a week.  
***---***

He was starting to feel human again until the door to his room opened and a hairy arm snaked in holding a can which dispersed a spray of insecticide if his nostrils weren't deceiving him. From outside the room he could hear Caps voice telling someone to stop being a twit and the sound of muffled sniggers. Chet walked in as the owner of the hairy arm and can of fly spray. The rest of A shift followed. A few coughs from Chet after breathing in the fly spray showed how heavily he had sprayed the room.

“How's it going there spider man? I thought you might be busy spinning a web or maybe entertaining Charlotte.” Chet said as he walked up to the bed to check out his friend. They hadn't been allowed to visit him, mainly due to Johnny's own request as he was quite often indisposed with the diarrhea and cramps which weren't pleasant to watch or zonked out on the analgesia.

“Charlotte?” a confused Johnny asked.

“Yeah, Charlotte as in Charlotte's web. Oh forget it.” Chet said when he saw the nonplussed look on Johnny's face. 

The guys were stood around the bed and talked about the last week and the funny call outs they had had and the arsonist that was still at large and giving them grief with a middle of the night three alarm call out to an abandoned warehouse on their last shift. Roy placed some home cooking on Johnny's bedside locker. Joanne had cooked oatmeal raisin cookies just for Johnny. As Chet went to grab one, Roy just as quickly smacked his hand away and gave him a dirty look. Johnny then offered them to the guys but only Chet took him up on the offer. 

“What! I'm hungry. Besides I didn't come empty handed. I brought Johnny here some food. I even researched it especially for his recovery.”

He bent down to a small bag at his feet. He rummaged around for a bit before pulling out a container and placed it proud of place next to the biscuits. While everyone was trying to work out what was in the plastic container Chet was slowly inching back towards the door. 

It was Roy, who being the closest, guessed what they were. His suspicions were confirmed when he opened up the container.

“Crickets, Dead CRICKETS!!!! Are you serious. Chet...”

Roy's outrage was cut short by a loud snort and full out laughter emanating from the bed.

All eyes were on Gage as he let out an all inclusive belly laugh. Wiping tears from his eyes, he thanked Chet who by now was by the door and was planning on leaving when he heard general laughter instead of the rebukes he had been expecting. 

Coming back towards the bed he went on to extort the virtues of crickets for recuperating spider men. Everybody knew that crickets had more nutritional value than flies he was saying. The afternoon preceded with shared laughter and several cups of dispenser coffee and shared cookies. Everyone passed on the crickets apart from Mike Stoker who asked if he could take the crickets when they left as his nephew would feed them to his pet frog. Johnny gladly handed them over grateful that he wouldn't be sharing his room with a container full of dead bugs. 

Yep, life was looking up again Johnny thought as he laid his head back against his pillow watching his shift mates as they left the room with resounding and hearty farewells and get well soon wishes. Meanwhile Roy siddled up to the bed and resting his hand on Johnny's shoulder gave a gentle squeeze. He was just glad that his friend was feeling better and would be back at work soon. 

“I'll pop in tomorrow and see you between runs when I can, OK?” 

“I'll look forward to it.” Johnny said with a lopsided grin to emphasize the point.

THE END


End file.
